Wine for Words

A special fundraiser for Literary Sojourn!

Join Literary Sojourn, Steamboat's festival of authors, for a summer evening at the home of Grace and Ralph Strangis to celebrate wine, friends and great books with celebrity wine auctioneer Ursula Hermacinski.

Tingle & Mingle! Ursula will be circulating through the crowd to talk about the evening's wines and answer any wine questions you bring. Taste a variety of wines and enjoy an array of Italian treats as they emerge from the Strangis’ outdoor oven. Chef Fred Vescio (cousin to host Ralph Strangis) will be cooking up a variety of flatbread pizzas and crostini in the Italian wood-fired oven. Favorite recipes from Fred’s family’s acclaimed second-generation Italian restaurant in Minneapolis will include an array of fresh summer ingredients. Among the recipes from his famous 50-year old Vescio’s Italian Restaurant will be two styles of their traditional Italian homemade sausage.

All proceeds from the evening’s festivities benefit Literary Sojourn, a nonprofit cultural event organized under the auspices of the Bud Werner Memorial Library.

About Ursula HermacinskiUrsula began her career as an auctioneer at Christie's in New York, working as a furniture and decorations generalist until Christie’s called upon her to actualize her passion for the grape. In 1994, Ursula established Christie's New York wine department along with their original auction partner, Zachys. The Zachys-Christie’s New York wine auctions set new standards for the American wine auction market. Ursula left Christie's at the end of 1998 for a pioneering interest in online wine auctions, an endeavor that earned her a profile in Wine Spectator.

Over the years, Ursula has been invited to work most of the country's top benefit wine auctions. In 1992, Ursula became the first woman to take the rostrum at the world famous Napa Valley Wine Auction, where she continues to appear annually. In June 2005, Ursula shared the stage with Jay Leno to hammer down the largest Napa Valley Wine Auction total to date: $10.5 million. She has banged her gavel at charity auctions for baseball player Rusty Staub, celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, and movie stars Robin Williams, Michael J. Fox, Heather Locklear and Teri Hatcher, and her talks have been featured at the Aspen Food & Wine Festival, The International Pinot Noir Celebration and the American Institute of Wine and Food National Convention. She has been featured in many national magazines and on CNN’s Marketplace, often addressing wine and its investment potentials. From 2006 to 2010, Ursula was Estate Manager at Screaming Eagle vineyard in California.

Along with the wine world’s most influential figures in the international wine scene, Ursula is included in Ann B. Matasar’s Women of Wine, and Vanity Fair magazine included her as a definition in their 2005 Wine Snob’s Dictionary.